Strauss & co - 2015 Mid-year Review

correspondingly, an elevation to a higher plateau of value in the bidding at auction. At the same time, there is a wider and less hidebound appreciation to be read of the qualities of artists like Irma Stern and JH Pierneef than was formerly the case. Where the market for Stern focused in the past almost exclusively on a particular, Gauguin-meets-El Greco kind of stylistic fix in her Arabs, her flame-like still lifes and densely featured interiors, recent market interest has been within a wider range of manner. Thus for instance, her luminously coloured and freely brush- stroked Spring Landscape , a gouache both stylistically remote from and far more impressionistic in its realisation than the classic Sterns, sold for over R1 million in March 2014 – to affirm the inalienable and ongoing quality of the artist as a practitioner of art. Irma Stern Spring Landscape Sold R1 079 960, 10 November 2014 Zanzibari Street Scene Sold R852 600, 1 June 2015 © Irma SternTrust | DALRO © Irma SternTrust | DALRO 13